Here’s a look at trending stories from today, Jan. 31:
Justin Mohn
A man accused of beheading his father in suburban Philadelphia and posting a gruesome video on social media that shows him holding up the severed head has been charged with first-degree murder and abusing a corpse, authorities said Wednesday.
Justin Mohn was armed and had jumped a fence at a National Guard facility about 100 miles (161 kilometers) away when he was arrested late Tuesday, hours after the killing, a Guard spokesperson said.
The victim, identified as Michael F. Mohn, was found beheaded in the bathroom of his home in Levittown, where his 32-year-old son also lived. Police said Justin Mohn was taken into custody at Fort Indiantown Gap.
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FILE – Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis appears during a hearing regarding defendant Harrison Floyd, a leader in the organization Black Voices for Trump, as part of the Georgia election indictments, Nov. 21, 2023, in Atlanta. Lawyer Ashleigh Merchant, who has alleged that Willis has had an inappropriate romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor hired for the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump, has called the two to testify at a hearing next month.
Fani Willis
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and a special prosecutor she hired for the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump have been issued subpoenas by a defense attorney who has alleged Willis and the prosecutor had an inappropriate romantic relationship.
Lawyer Ashleigh Merchant, who represents Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, filed a motion Jan. 8 seeking to dismiss the indictment and to remove Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade from the case.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who’s presiding over the election case, has ordered Willis’ team to respond by Friday to the motion and to remove Willis from the prosecution. He has set a hearing on the matter for Feb. 15. Merchant confirmed that she has subpoenaed both Willis and Wade to testify at that hearing.
The base is all that remains of a bronze statue of legendary baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson that was stolen last Thursday from a park in Wichita, Kan. The statue, valued at $75,000, was the centerpiece of the League 42 ballpark facility, a baseball league started in 2015 to help kids with little access to organized sports.
Jackie Robinson
A Jackie Robinson statue that was cut off at the ankles and stolen Thursday from a Little League baseball field in Wichita, Kansas, has been found in a trash can at a different park – burned and in pieces, police say.
Officers responded to a call Tuesday morning about a trash can fire in Garvey Park, Wichita Police Department spokesperson Andrew Ford said at a Tuesday news conference.
“Shortly after extinguishing the fire, the fire department saw what appeared to be pieces of the Jackie Robinson statue, which is not salvageable at this time,” Ford said at the news conference.
League 42, a nonprofit that provides low-cost baseball registration for children, had raised $50,000 for the life-sized statue at its field, according to CNN affiliate KLBY.
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Get more of today’s trending topics here:
Mike Macdonald
Byron Allen
6 of the most groundbreaking recent technological developments that keep us connected
6 of the most groundbreaking recent technological developments that keep us connected
The 20th century was a period of unprecedented innovation, ushering in technology that transformed the ways humans can connect to one another, including the internet, radio, and mobile phones. Humans could speak with, see, and send messages to people thousands of miles away from them in real time. Over those 100 years, the newly connected world became more globalized, changing our politics, economics, and cultures.
In recent years, the world has continued to get smaller. Using news sources, medical research, and economic information from the Federal Communications Commission, Airalo compiled a list of the six most influential technological developments over the past decade that keep us connected.
The 21st century has already seen radical progress that may even outpace the previous century. Technological developments are rapidly changing how we communicate, work, socialize, and travel, all to keep us more intimately connected. Many of these advancements were either invented or greatly advanced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which required us to communicate with each other from a distance on a previously unprecedented level.
Whether we’re touring the city streets of Tokyo, working remotely in England, or spelunking in the wilderness, these new developments keep us in contact, within reach, and on the map.
Visual-based localization
Anyone who has relied on GPS apps in their phone to get around can attest: once you’re indoors, the service is largely useless. That’s because building walls block GPS radio signals. But new developments in smartphone-detected visible light may advance indoor navigation enough that “in the future, you’ll never get lost again…even if you want to,” Navigine founder Alexey Panyov told National Geographic.
By using camera sensors and machine learning to analyze surroundings visually, smartphones can now provide users with multi-layered navigation information. Perhaps the best-known example is Google Maps’ Live View function, which the company introduced in 2019. Users have less chance of becoming disoriented, and their location is easier to track, especially when navigating dense urban environments.
Beyond helping us keep better tabs on each other, however, visual-dependent localization systems have the potential to serve a variety of sectors, as the many technology and location system companies using them know. One of these companies, Navigine, has documented dozens of case studies experimenting with applications of light-based navigation, which has so far included increasing hospital efficiency, making finding your way in an airport easier, improving railroad travel experiences, and allowing users to navigate driving a car without GPS signals.
5G
Mobile phones have progressed from 2G to 3G to 4G to 5G, which may have the most significant impact on society yet. The network began rolling out in 2022, but people will feel its full benefits over the coming decade.
Compared to its predecessors, 5G provides dramatically quicker, more responsive, and more connective internet service, thanks to specially encoded data sent over airwaves that offers network carriers more flexibility. No single company or individual is responsible for 5G, but it continues to be developed by a partnership of commercial tech innovators, including Qualcomm.
The first application of 5G is in-home internet service, adding more competition to a relatively uncompetitive home connectivity market. The prospective possibilities of the network seem to be transformative: Developers are outlining the potential to create highly accessible robots, augmented reality, smart objects, and remotely piloted drones with use across agriculture, emergency response, and commercial industries.
From June 2022 to June 2023, the number of commercially available 5G devices grew by roughly 50%, with everyday users able to employ rapid computing abilities toward traffic control, autonomous vehicles, and communicating with each other via extended reality headsets.
Advancements in video-chatting technologies
Though it might be hard to believe today, video-calling technology was initially a flop: AT&T first debuted its technology in 1927, but it was seen as largely useless and failed to garner a market. This pattern repeated in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1990s. It wasn’t until Apple introduced FaceTime in 2010 that the technology began to take hold. It has since seen continuous developments within the last half-decade alone, primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic, making it ubiquitous and necessary.
The most popular video chatting platforms include FaceTime, Google Meet, Skype, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams (which only launched in 2017).
As the popularity of these programs exploded during and following the pandemic, they continued to build on new features to make communications more accessible for users. For instance, in 2020, Zoom rolled out additional features that help people who are deaf participate in meetings, such as the ability to rearrange their windows to see interpreters better.
Incorporating artificial intelligence has allowed these same platforms to push the abilities of video conferencing further, including multi-camera capabilities, gesture recognition, real-time translation, and subtitles. These developments not only affect how people connect, but they also expand the possibilities for telemedicine, education, and work.
eSIM
Prior to 2016, our mobile phones’ customer identity and local network connection were controlled by a physical SIM (or “subscriber identity module”) card: a fingernail-sized chip that slid in and out of a tiny slot on the side of the phone. However, eSIMs, which are programmed remotely, are increasingly replacing physical SIM cards, allowing users to switch between multiple SIM identities on their phone through internal software, without any physical chip required. This allows for much greater international connectivity, especially for remote workers or those traveling internationally. For example, someone traveling or working abroad can now switch between multiple domestic and international phone lines within minutes, keeping them in touch with coworkers, family, and friends across several borders.
This new technology was first developed by the Global System for Mobile Communications as part of the Internet of Things sector and soon after expanded to consumer devices. eSIMs also diminish the risk of identity theft from stolen phones, by disabling thieves from hijacking a phone’s physical SIM card. It is thought that as 5G becomes more globally prevalent, not only phones but also drones and sensor-controlled devices can be activated in greater numbers than ever before thanks to eSIMs.
Health-sharing apps
Tracking your health and fitness isn’t new—but the ability to share it is. Apple first debuted its Health app in 2014, which uses a smartphone’s built-in GPS, camera, and other sensors to gauge a user’s heart rate, respiration, step count, and other activity.
Several other apps have since followed suit, allowing users to track daily activity, symptoms of illness, medication intake, and a slew of additional medical information, all while navigating privacy concerns.
In April 2016, the Federal Trade Commission released a guide on privacy and security best practices for mobile health apps. Still, this document only provides guidance and continues to leave room for improvement. On the other hand, the pandemic has helped the public see the importance of technology in health care, which made them more amenable to sharing their data, according to a 2021 Pew survey.
In 2021, Apple took its Health app a step further by introducing a software update that not only tracks a user’s health information but analyzes it to identify trends like blood oxygen levels and cholesterol changes, with the goal of sharing this intel with family members, caregivers, and health care providers.
To accomplish this, the company encrypted and shared data from the Health app, allowing it to merge with six partner electronic medical record companies. The ability to share health information tracked continuously over a long period with providers can advance individualized medical care, and sharing it with friends and family can alert us when loved ones are in danger, particularly elderly relatives. Knowing our workouts are shared with friends has even been proven to level up our physical activity. The health app market is valued at around $49.2 billion and is projected to expand to $105.9 billion by 2030.
Story editing by Carren Jao. Copy editing by Kristen Wegrzyn. Photo selection by Lacy Kerrick.
This story originally appeared on Airalo and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
